Colleges adopt aggressive marketing to draw good students
Harry Chomsky would have been a good catch for any college. A top student at Lexington High School in Massachusetts, especially in mathematics and science, he scored a perfect 800 on the math portion of his Scholastic Aptitude Test. As the son of M.I.T. Linguistics Scholar Noam Chomsky, he could boast an impressive intellectual background. Swarthmore, one of the handful of colleges to which he applied, wrote to him periodically, pointing out the advantages of a small school. When Yale accepted him, the math department sent a congratulatory letter touting the university's program. Harvard had invited him to a special two-day reception in February, at which he got an extensive tour of the science facilities from top professors. In the end, Chomsky chose Harvard.
Thousands of academically promising high school seniors have received similar wooing, much of it more aggressive than the polite blandishments used by Swarthmore and the Ivy League colleges. Reason: the baby-boom generation has graduated. The number of 18-year-olds in the U.S. declined by 6% this year, and will go down another 20% in the next ten years. Although applications were up this year, admissions officers concede that many high school seniors were merely shopping around at more places. Says Scott Healy, admissions director at Southern Methodist University in Dallas: "It's really fierce out there. This is the hardest we've ever had to work to get a high-caliber freshman class."
For colleges and universities, sophisticated marketing strategies are becoming the key to survival and prosperity. A number of institutions have commissioned marketing surveys by outside consultants to find their strongest selling points. Once they pinpoint their strengths, colleges are using everything from videotapes to toll-free 800 numbers to capture the attention of prospective students. Alumni have been out stumping for recruits, then manning phone banks to congratulate newly accepted ones. The University of Southern California held receptions in nine U.S. cities during April to lure candidates who had been accepted. Before each occasion, top student prospects (those with a minimum 3.7 grade-point average and 1200 combined SAT score) were invited to more intimate brunches or dinners. While the receptions stressed academics, school officers were usually available to make deals on aid or assign housing; sometimes an Olympic athlete was on hand to talk sports. Perhaps partly as a result, applicants for U.S.C.'s freshman class are up substantially over last year's, and as of last week the number of accepted applicants making a commitment to enroll was running slightly higher.